The Fifth Horseman 3

In which responses to two more of the 16 anti-apologetics offered in Peter Boghossian’s A Manual to Creating Atheists are provided. The juxtaposition of the two anti-apologetics is particularly effective, as it illustrates the intrinsic lack of integrity, indeed, one should say the lack of good faith, of the Street Epistemologist.

ANTI-APOLOGETIC #1 

FAITH IS TRUE

“Why is there something rather than nothing? You have faith that there was no Creator.”

“Bear in mind that an atheist believes that all these miraculous coincidences took place by chance. But he doesn’t just believe that man and woman came into being without a Creator, but that all of creation did—amazing flowers, massive trees, succulent fruits, beautiful birds, the animal kingdom, the sea, fish, natural laws, etc. His faith is much greater than mine.”
—Ray Comfort, You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, but You Can’t Make Him Think (2009, p. 2)

This is the best argument I’ve heard for the existence of God. It’s the trump card played by believers. However, it doesn’t work.

There are several related ways to respond to why there’s something rather than nothing: “Why assume nothing is the default?” This is a question that has no answer. As prolific German philosopher Adolf Grünbaum states, “Why be astonished at being at all? To marvel at existence is to assume that nothingness is somehow more natural, more restful. But why? The ancients started with matter, not the void; perhaps nothingness is stranger than being” (Holt, 2012).

Similarly, “How do you know the universe didn’t always exist?” Even if appeals are made to the Big Bang, one can never know either that reality is one endless time loop with Big Bangs strung together for eternity, or that à la American theoretical physicist Brian Greene, we’re part of a larger multiverse with an infinite number of Big Bangs constantly occurring.

Why isn’t there nothing rather than something? On what basis can one claim nothing is the default position for existence? Couldn’t something be the default position, with nothing being the truly extraordinary thing? And even if we do accept by fiat, given our limited knowledge, that something rather than nothing is extraordinary, does that give license to make up answers as to why this is the case? It begs the question: is it better to pretend we know an answer to something we don’t actually know, or is it better to simply be honest and say, “I don’t know?”

The possibility that the universe always existed cannot be ruled out. This by definition casts doubt on a creator. No faith is needed to posit that the universe may have always existed.

The quality of Peter Boghossian’s education can be easily summarized by pointing out that of all the various intellectual arguments concerning God’s existence that have been concocted by Christendom over the centuries, the best one that he has ever heard was presented by Ray Comfort. This isn’t merely embarrassing for him, it should be so humiliating for him that he never again opines in public on the subject.

VD RESPONSE: Why assume nothing is the default? Because Scripture, Science, and Reason all point to nothing having preceded the universe as we presently observe and experience it. How do I know the universe didn’t always exist? Because Fred Hoyle’s Steady-State Universe theory, which was inspired by a freaking B-grade British horror movie, is contradicted by the theory of general relativity, the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation, Hubble’s observation that the universe was expanding, and both the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics, just to name a few things. You might as reasonably believe in a magic perpetual motion machine as an eternal universe.

As for your appeal to the multiverse hypothesis, if you are going to insist upon an infinite number of universes, then you must admit that at least one of those universes would have to contain a Creator God, in which case the evidence suggests that this happens to be that particular universe. Even if we are assured that in none of them does Sheldon dance.

As to WHY there is something rather than nothing, that is irrelevant. This is not a question of why, it is a question of what. Do you believe that the Earth is older than 6,000 years old? Then you cannot appeal to the current scientific consensus that calculates the age of the Earth to be 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years while simultaneously rejecting its calculation that the age of the Universe is 13.798±0.037 billion years.

The possibility that the universe has always existed was ruled out by scientists decades ago. It is true that no faith is needed to posit that the universe has always existed, just as no faith is needed to posit that you are a clown made out of candy. But you have to be a science denier to claim that either of those things are a legitimate possibility in this particular universe. Now, are you really prepared to deny science and declare your disbelief in what Newton, Einstein, Hawking, and Hubble, just to name a few, have established scientifically?

Or do you have faith in those men and their conclusions? Because I know, I am not merely “pretending to know”, that you don’t understand the math involved.

ANTI-APOLOGETIC #13

Defense: “Much of modern science and practical mathematics is based upon mere ‘native preference,’ not on any rational proof. Faith is the same.”

Response: “Science has a built-in corrective mechanism that faith does not have. There’s been convergence across all fields of science on virtually all scientific theories since the eighteenth century. At any point in the future, do you ever think there will be convergence on specific faith propositions? I don’t, because those propositions are arbitrary.”

VD RESPONSE: You attacked science by denigrating its consensus concerning the age of the universe and now you’re appealing to it? Why, I find myself beginning to doubt your integrity and your intellectual honesty! And your statement is false: science does not have a built-in corrective mechanism. As Thomas Kuhn demonstrated, scientists work within paradigmatic assumptions that they do not question and the so-called “corrective mechanism” to which you appeal is no different than it is in accounting or any other human activity where sufficient divergence from observed reality eventually tends to draw someone’s attention. Including, you will note, organized religion.

As for your question about convergence on specific faith propositions, you are quite clearly wrong. We have already observed what you claim to be impossible. History shows a considerable degree of convergence on specific faith propositions; 2,000 years ago, there were a plethora of pagan religions and only 11 Christian apostles. Now most of those pagan religions are defunct and there are 2.2 billion Christians around the world, accounting for more than one-quarter of the global population. In fact, the Bible itself describes the process of this inevitable convergence. One day EVERY knee shall bow, and one day EVERY tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Including yours. You can do it now. Or you can do it later. But you will do it.

PREVIOUS IN THE SERIES: The Fifth Horseman 2

Getting away with murder

Even on the rare occasions the police are ever charged with murder after killing someone, they get away with it:

Two California police officers who were videotaped in a violent struggle
with a homeless man during an arrest were acquitted Monday of killing
him. It was a rare case in which police officers were charged in a death involving actions on duty….

The video began with Ramos stopping Thomas on July 5, 2011, after the
officer answered a call about a disheveled man jiggling the handles of
car doors in a busy transit center parking lot. Ramos grew frustrated with Thomas, who wasn’t following orders to sit on a curb with his hands on his knees.

Just before the altercation began, Ramos snapped on plastic gloves, made
two fists and then held them in front of Thomas’ face as he said, “Now
see these fists? They’re going to (expletive) you up.”

Cicinelli, who arrived a few moments later, jolted Thomas several times
with an electric stun gun and used the butt end to hit Thomas in the
head and face, breaking bones.

Thomas was taken off life support five days later.

Well, that settles it. If the police are involved, you will get no justice from the legal system. It’s not as if this is a one-time event. It is dangerous to even call the police for help.

A Boiling Springs Lakes, North Carolina family is looking for answers
after local police shot and killed their mentally ill teenage son while
responding to a call for help….Wilsey said
that Vidal had been subdued until the third officer walked in and
the boy became agitated.

“Then all of a sudden, this Southport cop came, walked in the
house [and said]: ‘I don’t have time for this. Tase him. Let’s
get him out of here,'” Wilsey told NBC. After the stun gun
was used on Vidal, Wilsey said the third officer shot him, saying
he was protecting his officers.

“He reached right up, shot this kid point-blank, with all
intent to kill,” Wilsey added. “He just murdered him
flat out.”

It is increasingly looking as if the police in America have declared war on the mentally disturbed.

Optimistic

It would appear that Spengler, for one, has been listening to the Learned Elders of Wye. His article makes it appear as if the precious golden geese who have healed America with prosperity are in the early stages of preparing to take flight once more. David Goldman has what strikes me as a remarkably optimistic article on how much the Chinese like and admire the Jews because they have so much in common.

There is no greater compliment to any culture than to be admired by Chinese, who with some justification regard their civilization as the
world’s most ancient and, in the long run, most successful. The high
regard that the Chinese have for Jews should be a source of pride to the
latter. In fact, it is very pleasant indeed for a Jew to spend time in
China. The sad history of Jew-hatred has left scars on every European
nation, but it is entirely absent in the world’s largest country. On the
contrary, to the extent that Chinese people know something of the Jews,
their response to us is instinctively sympathetic.

“I am always surprised by the expressions of affection that the
Chinese show for the Jews. Both cultures, the Chinese emphasize, share
respect for family, learning and, yes, money,” wrote the journalist
Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore last year. ‘”Most Chinese will think Jews are
smart, clever or good at making money, and that they have achieved a
great deal,’ Professor Xu Xin, director of the Institute of Jewish
Studies at Nanjing University (one of over half a dozen centers in China
dedicated to studying Judaism) told me last week,” she wrote. “This
logic — that the Jews are admired for their success despite their small
numbers and historical oppression — has also led to a burgeoning
industry of self-help books that use Jewish culture and the Talmud to
preach business tips.”

Family, learning, respect for tradition, business acumen: these are
Jewish traits that the Chinese also consider to be their virtues. All
this is true as far as it goes. One might also mention that China never
has had reason to view the Jews as competitors for legitimacy.

Christianity began as a Jewish sect and has vacillated between the
claim that is has superseded Judaism and the view that it is a daughter
religion that should honor its parent. Islam claims that Jews and
Christians falsified the revelations given to them and that their
scriptures are a perversion of God’s true message, which Mohammed
restored to its original integrity. But by no stretch of the imagination
could China view the Jews as a threat to the legitimacy of its
civilization.

The Chinese, in short, have no reasons to dislike or fear the Jews,
and a number of reasons to admire them simply because Jews display
traits that Chinese admire among themselves.

Now, it’s possible that Goldman is correct. I’m an East Asian Studies major, I’m not Chinese. Perhaps the Chinese will welcome the Jewish people with more or less open arms the way the American people did following the large-scale Jewish retreat from the European continent. On the other hand, there is also the possibility that the Chinese will look at the historical track record of the Jewish people, see what they have done to the United States of America during the post-WWII period, and view them as a parasitical threat.

Perhaps Goldman doesn’t view the financial rape of the USA or the fact that China is sitting on $1.304 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds that could be rendered worthless overnight as a reason for the Chinese to dislike or fear the Jews, but I am a little less sanguine on the prospect. I also think Goldman underestimates the ruthlessness of the Chinese in matters tribal and nepotistic.

The survival strategy that worked so well in the Middle Ages, where the Jews would be expelled from a country, then quietly return until they were banished once more, doesn’t seem likely to work quite as well in an age of global communication. Hitler’s complaints about the Jews sounded entirely mad to Americans. They sound mad, and manufactured, even today. But in the event of the sort of economic catastrophe and political breakdown that so concerns the Elders of Wye, I tend to suspect the Chinese will take the accusations of President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert
Camacho a little more seriously.

Especially considering that the Chinese would like nothing better than to see a US political breakdown that would free them to claim the regional supremacy and world leadership they believe to be their civilizational birthright. I agree with Goldman that China does not view the Jews as a threat to the legitimacy of its
civilization; my understanding is that the Chinese already view them as a rival.

The scientific benefits of faith

Tangentially related to the day’s earlier post comes this news that there are material differences between the brains of religious individuals and those of the irreligious:

They say religion is a matter of the heart – but it seems the shape of our brains could also have a role to play. Believers or those with a spiritual side have ‘thicker’ sections of brain tissue than other people, a study suggests. And in welcome news for the faithful, the researchers think that this thickening could also help to stave off depression.

‘Our beliefs and our moods are reflected in our brain and with new imaging techniques we can begin to see this,’ Dr Myrna Weissman, a professor of psychiatry and epidemiology at Columbia University, told Reuters Health.

As I mentioned in the previous comments, I think it might be informative to see a study done on the frontal lobes of atheists. My scientific hypothesis, based on the observation that adult atheists tend to exhibit a variety of reasoning patterns more commonly observed in teenagers, is that the brains of atheists will show signs of their frontal lobes not being fully developed.

And before you deny the science, keep in mind that not one, but two scientific studies at two different universities have already found evidence supporting my hypothesis concerning a connection between mild forms of autism and atheism. It looks increasingly likely that Sam Harris’s attempt to bring neuroscience into religious matters is going to backfire on atheists in a big way.

But this should have been obvious from the start, as who is more likely to be aneurotypical, a small and poorly behaved minority or the overwhelming majority? As economists have learned over the last 80 years, Sigmund Freud’s ideas are a very poor basis upon which to build one’s scientific hypotheses.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that Mr. Harris’s frontal lobes are, at least in part, to blame for his inability to correctly reason through the probable connection between brain development and religious belief, assuming that there is one in the first place.

UPDATE: Gara complained that I didn’t mention the fact that atheists have higher average IQs than theists. So, I’m rectifying that by quoting myself on the subject of superior average atheist intelligence:

“I have readily conceded that religious individuals are less intelligent on average than non-believers in general and atheists in particular for years.  However, what the midwits who get very excited about this
statistical fact never seem to keep in mind is that because there are so
many more religious people, there are considerably more highly
intelligent religious people than there are highly intelligent
non-believers.

In fact, the ratio of theists to atheists with Mensa+ level IQs is more than 10 to one.”

The Fifth Horseman 2

I finished Peter Boghossian’s A Manual for Creating Atheists yesterday. Needless to say, it did not succeed in creating one. In fact, I suspect Dominic, TGM, and some of the other intelligent atheists here will tend to be mildly embarrassed by it, in much the same way that intelligent Christians are embarrassed by a Kirk Cameron attempt at apologetics. The difference is that Cameron means well, while Boghossian is, quite literally, the sort of person who will kick out a crutch from under a cripple’s arm because he doesn’t believe the individual is truly crippled. Nor will he likely apologize when he learns, after the fact, that he was wrong.

It is readily observable that Boghossian almost certainly ranks higher on the Aspie scale, or whatever they are calling it these days, than Sam Harris or even Richard Dawkins. He’s simply clueless about what (silence) in a conversation means, inevitably assuming that what the dialogue tends to indicate means: (I can’t talk to this idiot, he’s hopeless) is actually: (oh my goodness, I am struck dumb by the irrefutable reasoning of your beautiful mind). And that is giving Boggie the benefit of the doubt and assuming that he is accurately recalling the dialogues rather than inventing them out of whole cloth.

The funniest part of the book is without question the following conversation with his father. I have a strong suspicion that his father regards Boghossian with mixed embarrassment and pride, the latter over his minor celebrity, the former over the fact that Boggie is the picture of what Bruce Charlton describes as a clever silly.

(Not that these particular sillies are especially clever. The second funniest part of the book comes in the Introduction by the ever-hapless John Loftus:“I thanked God for everything, from getting me into the Christian-based Pepperdine University (my grades and SAT scores were unspectacular) to finding a parking place at theaters and restaurants.”)

Unspectacular grades, mediocre SATs, and barely getting into a third-rate university. And these guys are constantly appealing to their intelligence? But back to the two Boghossians and the book’s best dialogue:

When I told my father that K–12 educational systems should promote the value of epistemological rigor, he replied incredulously, “Are you kidding me? High school dropout rates are hovering around 33 percent in most [U.S.] cities. We can’t even teach kids how to read. What makes you think we’d be any more successful with instilling ‘epistemological rigor?’”

Whether or not we can be successful in helping people see value in epistemological rigor is an empirical question. I have my own speculation that this can be accomplished through pop culture—for example, comic books and TV shows for children that personify new heroes, Epistemic Knights, and new villains, Faith Monsters.

Didn’t even slow him down. Yes, it is an empirical question, but the point that Boghossian the Younger simply ignores is that the question has been answered! As you can see, we’re not exactly dealing with a godless genius here.

Boghossian the Elder made precisely the same point that I have repeatedly made concerning the teaching of evolution in the public schools. Both the evangelical evolutionists and Boghossian the Younger are so removed from reality that they are not only wrong, they are making a fundamental category error. How are the children at schools like this one in Queens, where the children have no books, going to develop epistemological vigor even if they spend all day watching what sounds like a bad version of Captain Planet? The total impossibility of the task is only underlined as one reads the book, as one observes that even though the younger Boghossian values the idea of epistemological rigor, he does not actually practice it.

The entire book reads rather like it was written by Otto from A Fish Called Wanda. Aristotle was not Belgian. The definition of faith is not “pretending to know things you don’t know”. The central message of Scepticism is not “Ecrasez l’infame”. More than one argument for the existence of God has withstood scrutiny and many of them have done so for centuries. I should very much like to see Boghossian personally attempt to address my preferred argumentum e maleficus; it would be certain to provide an amount of hilarity.

In any event, now that I’ve read the manual, I’m not going to go through it on a page by page basis because most of my posts would consist of long quotes followed by short one- or two-word summaries: “exhortation” and “naked assertion”. Instead, I’m will begin with critiquing each of the 17 tactical anti-apologetics he presents, after which I will address certain other aspects of the book when I am finished with it. If there are specific sections or assertions you would like to see me address in a post, please download the book from the readily available torrent Pirate Bay and let me know. Even if you are an IP enthusiast, you can do so in good conscience, as Boghossian writes in Chapter 9:

“To prevent doxastic closure it’s also important to read the work of noted apologists. The only two I’d suggest are Alvin Plantinga and William Lane Craig, though I’d urge you not to buy their books; their projects don’t need your support.”

It is entirely possible that Boghossian not familiar with The Irrational Atheist, but even if he was, I am confident he would not recommend reading it to prevent doxastic closure because TIA is exactly the sort of thing that Boghossian recommends his Street Epistemologists avoid at all costs: the questioning of atheist assumptions and the criticism of their arguments. The Manual may be intended to be inoffensive, but it is all offense and offers very little in the way of anticipated defense. And therein, as I will demonstrate in this series of posts, lies the tactical Christian response.

Since this has already been a long post, I will begin with one of the shorter anti-apologetics from Chapter 7:

ANTI-APOLOGETIC #12


Defense: “Atheism is just another religion. You have faith in atheism.”

Response: “Atheism is a conclusion one comes to as a result of being rational and honest. Atheism is a conclusion that’s based on the best available evidence for the existence of God—which is that there is none. Atheism is not a religion. Atheism is not a belief. Atheism is, basically, the lack of belief in God(s). Atheists follow no creeds or doctrines. They engage in no particular set of behaviors.”

VD RESPONSE: How old were you when you became an atheist? Most atheists declare themselves to be atheists before they are old enough to be considered mature enough to legally drink, so reason indicates that it is less a conclusion based on reason and honesty than on teenage hormones and temptation. There is considerable documentary and testimonial evidence for the existence of God, the kind of evidence that is legally admissible in a court of law. You are deceptively substituting the subset of scientific evidence for the entire set of evidence, which calls into doubt your evidence-free assertion that atheism is based on being honest.

As for your other claims about atheism, do you believe in ghosts? Do you believe in Feng Shui? Do you believe in evolution by natural selection? Do you believe in abiogenesis? What do any of those things have to do with a lack of belief in God? Your definition of atheism is clearly incomplete, at best.

Finally, the atheist Peter Boghossian declared that an evangelical atheist “offers a humanistic vision”. He wrote that his atheist Street Epistemology “offers a humanism that’s taken some hits and gained from experience. This isn’t Pollyanna humanism, but a humanism that’s been slapped around and won’t fall apart.” So, how can you say that atheists follow no creeds or doctrines when they are going around actively trying to sell a specific type of humanism? Is that what you are offering to me? A humanistic vision? Then you obviously have faith in humanism! And given what you’ve been saying about the evils of faith, shouldn’t you be addressing that log in your own eye before worrying about any splinters in mine?

PREVIOUS IN THE SERIES: The Fifth Horseman 1

A sacrifice for nothing

The fall of Fallujah, met with complete indifference in the very neocon circles that endlessly proclaimed the supreme importance of the Iraqi Adventure, sickens the Marines who fought there:

“I don’t think anyone had the grand illusion that Falluja or Ramadi was going to turn into Disneyland, but none of us thought it was going to fall back to a jihadist insurgency,” he said. “It made me sick to my stomach to have that thrown in our face, everything we fought for so blatantly taken away.”

The bloody mission to wrest Falluja from insurgents in November 2004 meant more to the Marines than almost any other battle in the 12 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many consider it the corps’ biggest and most iconic fight since Vietnam, with nearly 100 Marines and soldiers killed in action and hundreds more wounded.

“Lives were wasted, and now everyone back home sees that,” said James Cathcart. He fought as a private first class in the Marines in Falluja in 2004, and was discharged with post-traumatic stress disorder. For many veterans of that battle — most now working in jobs long removed from combat — watching insurgents running roughshod through the streets they once fought to secure, often in brutal close-quarters combat, has shaken their faith in what their mission achieved.

It shouldn’t shake their faith in what their mission achieved, because one can’t have faith in nothing. It should shake their faith in the US political system and the commanders-in-chief who are abusing the trust of the American military.

Let’s hope they remember this the next time the usual suspects are beating the war drums for attacking Serbia Iraq Afghanistan Syria Iran.

A naked atrocity

There is delusion. There is self-delusion. And then there is Lena Dunham. Now, I have never seen Girls. I have no intention of ever seeing Girls. The idea of spending even a nanosecond watching Sex In The City with ugly New York City girls who are apparently even MORE retarded than Sarah Jessica Parker and company isn’t exactly on my list of Things To Do.

“I remember looking in the mirror as a kid and it would be like for an
hour at a time, and I’d be like: ‘I’m just so beautiful. Everybody is so
lucky that they get to look at me.’ And of course that changes as you
get older, but I may have held on to that little-kid feeling that was me
alone in my bathroom.”

Yes, lucky. So lucky. That’s the first thing that springs to mind. It doesn’t even look human. It looks like something out of Lovecraft. It looks like something that should be harpooned and processed for ivory and oil. It looks like the Pillsbury Doughboy was raped by a dugong. It looks like something that most certainly should not be displayed without clothes anywhere, least of all on television. If there is a rational argument for Sharia in the United States of America, this is it. Say what you will about Wahhabism, but at least in Saudi Arabia, they’d put a misshapen creature like this in a burqah.

Some say that beauty is on the inside. But when there is beauty on the inside, some hint of it always shines through. This abomination is pure self-centered ugliness seeping out from within.

Hollywood’s favorite monster

Granted, Mia Farrow is more than a bit of a nutcase. But given his confirmed behavior, there isn’t much reason to doubt the allegations that Woody Allen is a child molester are true:

Frank and Mia stayed close, however, even when she was married to the
composer-conductor André Previn, whom she divorced in 1979, after having
three sons and adopting three at-risk Asian daughters. She also
continued to see Sinatra throughout her 13-year relationship with Woody
Allen, which suffered a jolt when she found lurid photographs taken by
Allen of Soon-Yi Previn, one of her adopted daughters, then a sophomore
in college, on the mantel in Allen’s Manhattan apartment. Only a month
earlier, in December 1991, Allen had formally adopted two of Mia’s
children, 15-year-old Moses and 7-year-old Dylan, even though he was in
therapy for inappropriate behavior toward Dylan. In August 1992, after
disappearing with Allen in Mia’s Connecticut country house and
reappearing without underpants, Dylan told her mother that Allen had
stuck his finger up her vagina and kissed her all over in the attic,
charges Allen has always vociferously denied.

Ronan Farrow adds on Twitter: “Missed the Woody Allen tribute – did they put the part where a woman
publicly confirmed he molested her at age 7 before or after Annie Hall?”

Woody Allen isn’t funny. He’s grotesque. He’s ugly. He’s a whiny little sexually obsessed monster. His films are tedious, unimaginative, and narcissistic. And he’s a child molester. The fact that Hollywood sees in him a man worthy of receiving its tribute tells you all you need to know about that depraved Gomorrah.

Every now and then, I’m asked if I’m interested in optioning the film rights to my books, sometimes even by people with actual film credits. My answer is always no. Not merely no, but HELL NO! I want nothing to do with Hollywood. It’s not an accident or coincidence that Hollywood so often takes pure storytelling gold and turns it into filth. They are the anti-Rumplestiltskins. They love rolling in filth.

Mailvox: shut up, he explained

The Great Martini doesn’t permit his complete unfamiliarity with Sextus Empiricus get in the way of his expressing a demonstrably incorrect opinion about Boghossian’s clear-cut violation of Sextus’s Sceptical teaching of “suspension of judgment”:

He hasn’t seemed to run afoul of this yet — I just started reading the
Kindle version. Sextus advised suspended judgement but didn’t preclude
the assertion of claims, that seems to be how his skeptical philosophy
would be conducted. As far as I’ve gotten, Bog affirms Dawkins’ 1-7
level of belief, that Dawkins only claimed a 6, and that the definition
of “atheist” he wants to use is a person who doesn’t believe there is
enough evidence to confirm the existence of God. I’m sure he’s not
going to spend the entire book holding to strict suspension of judgement
(I mean the entire purpose of the book is to weaken the societal
influence of religion, which implies a judgement), but at least he seems
to be aligning himself with the skeptical stance from the beginning.

This is completely and utterly wrong. Boghossian has done nothing of the sort. Do you want to know why I am so openly contemptuous of so many people who are fairly intelligent and sound more or less reasonable? Do you want to know why I am inspired to describe myself as a superintelligence? The reason is that it often feels as if I am the only intelligent individual who writes these days who ever bothers to take five minutes to actually read the bloody material upon which I am intending to opine. I don’t know if it was TGM’s intent to defend Boghossian or if he simply happened to miss the obvious, but either way, it is readily apparent that he doesn’t know anything about the Scepticism of Sextus Empiricus.

Scepticism does not mean “I am dubious about X.” It does not mean “I am going to convince you that X is better than Y”. It does not mean “I will only believe X if there is sufficient evidence to justify it”. It means: “I have no opinion about either X or Y, and if you assert that X is better, I will argue that Y is better in order to produce a contradiction of equal weight and thereby allow me to suspend my judgment.” What virtually no one who talks about skepticism seems to understand is that for the Sceptic, suspension of judgment is not the method or the initial approach, it is the objective. If Boghossian was a genuine Sceptic, he would have presented an argument for the primacy of faith over reason to his atheist audience.

TGM is disputing this: “ Boghossian’s very stated purpose is in direct and explicit
opposition to everything Sextus Empiricus advises, beginning with
“suspension of judgment”.”

In the fourth sentence of Chapter One, Boghossian explains his purpose:  “The goal of this book is to… help [the faithful] abandon their faith and embrace reason.”

So, already we know that the Fifth Horseman clearly has an opinion on at least two things. Faith is bad by nature. Reason is good by nature. That this is a correct summary of his opinions on the two matters is confirmed repeatedly throughout the book. Now let us turn to Sextus Empiricus and the Outlines of Pyrrhonism.

Sextus: “He who is of the opinion that anything is either good or bad by nature is always troubled…. But he who is undecided, on the contrary, regarding things that are good and bad by nature, neither seeks nor avoids anything eagerly, is therefore in a state of tranquility of soul…. The Sceptic… rejects the opinion that anything is in itself bad by nature. Therefore we say that the aim of the Sceptic is imperturbability in matters of opinion.”

Boghossian reveals his clear-cut opinions concerning faith being bad by nature and reason being good by nature. He is not even remotely imperturbable with regards to either matter of opinion. Therefore he is not only troubled, but his very stated purpose is in direct and explicit opposition to the heart of what Sextus Empiricus teaches. Which is exactly what I stated in the first place. Boghossian can’t possibly be said to be “aligning himself with the skeptical stance from the beginning”, not when he is expressly violating the very aim of the Sceptic.

And, in doing so, the Fifth Horseman shows himself to be a fraud, given his risible attempt to claim the intellectual mantle of Sextus Empiricus. As it happens, I very much doubt that Boghossian has ever read anything Sextus wrote that isn’t on Wikipedia.

DH had a much more informed take on Boghossian’s little book:

This has all the hallmarks of petty atheism which has as its main feature a
stunning lack of scholarship and education. One of the main
attractions of the RC church is that despite all the many faults, and
theological questions I may have, the long and ancient history of
scholarship remains unbroken. Whatever you think of any given Pope,
it’s unlikely that anything he ever wrote would be so filled with rote
unverifiable garbage.

Oh, we haven’t even gotten to the juvenile, self-serving definitions of terms such as “faith”, “hope” and “atheist” yet. It is a stunningly dishonest little book and is unlikely to impress anyone with an IQ over +1SD who reads it with an open or critical mind.

The Fifth Horseman 1

Peter Boghossian has written a little manual on atheist evangelism that has concerned some Christians. Having read two of its nine chapters so far, I can assure you that it is simply a weaponized version of the same endless bait-and-switching upon which Messrs. Dawkins and Harris rely so heavily. However, given MPAI, I have no doubt there are living, breathing human beings who found Mr. Harris’s Red State argument as conclusive and convincing as Mr. Dawkins did, so it seems worthwhile to provide an inoculation to Mr. Boghossian’s poisonous little book as a public service.

This I shall do on the blog, going through it in much the same way various atheists went through the first three chapters of TIA before reaching Mount Chapter Four and running off to Las Vegas and so forth.

This book will teach you how to talk people out of their faith. You’ll learn how to engage the faithful in conversations that help them value reason and rationality, cast doubt on their beliefs, and mistrust their faith. I call this activist approach to helping people overcome their faith, “Street Epistemology.” The goal of this book is to create a generation of Street Epistemologists: people equipped with an array of dialectical and clinical tools who actively go into the streets, the prisons, the bars, the churches, the schools, and the community—into any and every place the faithful reside—and help them abandon their faith and embrace reason.

A Manual for Creating Atheists details, explains, and teaches you how to be a street clinician and how to apply the tools I’ve developed and used as an educator and philosopher. The lessons, strategies, and techniques I share come from my experience teaching prisoners, from educating tens of thousands of students in overcrowded public universities, from engaging the faithful every day for more than a quarter century, from over two decades of rigorous scholarship, and from the streets.

Street Epistemology harkens back to the values of the ancient philosophers—individuals who were tough-minded, plain-speaking, known for self-defense, committed to truth, unyielding in the face of danger, and fearless in calling out falsehoods, contradictions, inconsistencies, and nonsense. Plato was a wrestler and a soldier with broad shoulders. He was decorated for bravery in battle (Christian, 2011, p. 51). Socrates was a seasoned soldier. At his trial, when facing the death penalty, he was unapologetic. When asked to suggest a punishment for his “crimes,” he instead proposed to be rewarded (Plato, Apology).

Hellenistic philosophers fought against the superstitions of their time. Lucretius, Sextus Empiricus, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and others combated the religious authorities of their period, including early versions of Christianity (Clarke, 1968; Nussbaum, 1994). They thought the most important step was to liberate people from fear of tortures of the damned and from fear that preachers of their epoch were spouting. Hellenistic philosophers were trying to encourage stoic self-sufficiency, a sense of self-responsibility, and a tough-minded humanism.

Boghossian starts off by trying to fire up the troops. They’re going to be as tough as street preachers and unemployed boy-buggering Greeks! More importantly, he also signals right away that he’s going to play very fast and loose with the readily verifiable truth, given that Lucretius (55 BC) lived before Jesus Christ, Sextus Empiricus wrote against mathemeticians and the very Hellenic philosphers Boghossian is lionizing, and Marcus Aurelius actually WAS the religious authority, being not only the Emperor of Rome, but a member of “all the priestly colleges” of Rome who was literally deified in 180 AD.

None of these four examples, not a single one, “thought the most important step was to liberate people from fear of tortures of the damned”. Sextus Empiricus, for example, declares that “the aim of the Sceptic is tranquility of soul in those things which pertain to the opinion and moderation in the things that life imposes.” Indeed, Boghossian’s very stated purpose is in direct and explicit opposition to everything Sextus Empiricus advises, beginning with “suspension of judgment”.

Boghossian intends to teach atheists how to become an evangelical. And I am going to teach you how to crucify and humiliate those evangelicals using the very tools to which Boghossian is fraudulently appealing. He may be an educator and a philosopher, with two decades of what already appears to be not very rigorous scholarship behind him, but then, I am a superintelligence who has already taken four atheist scalps.

The fifth one won’t be any trouble at all. The manual is nothing but rhetoric in the guise of dialectic, and as most of you have learned, rhetoric combined with actual dialectic will reliably trump the pseudo-dialectic.